You’re assuming that the average person who sees about 5 commercials every 10 minutes or so every half hour is going to take the time to go to your website and click through to the section outlining funders.

That’s not going to happen - not even close.

And again, why do all of these coal companies have to pay you to do these ads? Why doesn’t Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the US, run these ads under their own name?

“nobody pays attention?
Um, desmogblog was in the new york times 2 weeks ago”

Yup. Apparently, nobody pays attention. –

New York Times anticipates newsroom layoffs

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) – Newsroom layoffs are foreseen at The New York Times after the newspaper’s attempt to reduce positions through voluntary buyouts fell short of its 100-job target.

In a memo sent to employees Tuesday afternoon, Assistant Managing Editor Bill Schmidt said: “[E]very effort to handicap the outcome suggests that we are almost certain to fall short of the number of volunteers we will need. If that is indeed the case, as we expect it will be, we will – regrettably – be forced to resort to some limited number of layoffs within the core newsroom.”
New York Times Co.’s flagship newspaper, struggling along with the industry to stem losses in advertising sales as more readers turn to the Web for news and information, said in February that it would need to cut its newsroom staff by about 100 positions.

Those videos are a great response to the Clean Coal commercials. I hope people don’t buy into their “spin” campaign.

I am trying to find easy, simple things I can do to help stop global warming (I don’t plan on buying a hybrid). Has anyone seen that www.EarthLab.com is promoting their Earth Day (month) challenge, with the goal to get 1 million people to take their carbon footprint test in April? I took the test, it was easy and only took me about 2 minutes and I am planning on lowering my score with some of their tips.

I am looking for more easy fun stuff to do. If you know of any other sites worth my time let me know.

Yeah, and while you’re doing that, Suzuki will be motoring across the country in his diesel rock-star tour bus, promoting his latest book of New Age poetry. Gore will continue gad about in his private Challenger executive jet, and ride in limos.

“I am trying to find easy, simple things I can do to help stop global warming”

This seems a strangely impotent and facile response to what Global Warming enthusiasts often claim is an apocalypse. It would appear that you don’t take the problem very seriously, given your half-hearted emphasis on only doing things that are “easy” and “simple”. How on Earth do you expect us skeptics to take your claims seriously – since you obviously don’t take them seriously yourself?

I think what’s plain here is that, despite the most strident rhetoric, Global Warming enthusiasts, deep down, in some vestigial subconcious remnant of common sense, grasp the obvious fact that absolutely nothing they, or the entire population of the planet do, can possibly control the climate. And so, you resort to empty symbolic feel-good gestures, that do nothing other than give you a warm feeling of self-importance and imaginary moral superiority. “Simple” and “easy”.

Which plants exactly are thriving in the upper atmosphere, and taking advantage of the 747 megatonnes of carbon dioxide released through Canadians’ activity in 2005 alone? Or the remaining 98% percent produced elsewhere in 2005? (Ref: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080422/d080422a.htm) Or better yet, all the CO2 produced in the past 100 years?

“They focus on the “bonus allowance program” – which would issue free allowances to utilities who build plants with CCS based on the tons of CO2 sequestered. Their conclusion: this program would be very costly (between $68 and $110 billion through 2030) but would result in a small number of new plants with CCS (no more than 48 gigawatts by 2030).

The reason for these large costs is that utilities would receive windfalls far greater than the added costs of CCS itself. Some one-gigawatt plants, for example, would receive free allowances worth $4.6 billion. These allowances would enable utilities not simply to finance the added costs of CCS but to offset emissions at existing coal plants, delaying reductions that would otherwise be required under the bill’s declining emission caps. Despite the windfalls received by specific utilities, CCS would not, in fact, be required at any new plant and conventional uncontrolled coal plants could continue to be built.”
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/18/151251/454

And, regardless of whether the tab is picked up by the evil utilities or by the benevolent “gummint, the cost will ultimately be borne by consumers when they pay either their power bills or their taxes.

But I am very afraid of socialism.
It is a creaping cancer that is much worse than communism.
Worst possible that could happen to our society.
Could not and will not live in a cesspool of socialist decay.

But where the real kickass is at, is in centralized solar thermal, ideally with heat storage.
http://greyfalcon.net/solarthermal
http://www.esolar.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9vkkFNkE44

Dish solar without storage though might be competitive for day-time power.
http://greyfalcon.net/csp4
http://greyfalcon.net/csp

_

Geothermal, now that’s just damned wonderful where you can get it. Better reliability than a coal plant, and it runs 24/7.
For instance, Geothermal provides more renewable energy to California than all the other renewable technologies combined, many times over.
And this is after you take into account that California has over 90% of US’s solar electricity.
technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=17236
geo-energy.org/publications/reports/November%202006%20Geothermal%20Power%20Production%20and%20Development%20Survey.pdf
web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html
web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/techtalk51-17.pdf
greyfalcon.net/geothermal
rasertech.com/uptospeed/
_

For instance, Google of course is getting in on the action trying to really kick this stuff into high gear.
greyfalcon.net/google greyfalcon.net/google2

I had an opertunity to do a cost benefit analysis on a solar panel for an office building about 6 months ago. The panel was state of the art, chosen by a government agency and promoted as the best of breed.
The output was rated at 1000 watts nominal.
The measured putput was 450 watts average duing the day.
The cost payback on this 28,000 dollar unit was 350 years using projected power costs.
Bottom line:
We could light the board room on sunny days for $28,000.
We decided there were more effective ways to make political statements.

We do have Geothermal heating however and that works ok. Not great, but ok and it’s payback is somwhere before the building is due to be bulldozed at least.

There is hope however. A company in Ontario is about to release solar panels that are 48% efficient. Thats twice as good as the best available now.
And there is talk from a research team in Isreal about a solar conversion technology that is over 800 times more efficient than that.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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